The desire to sport a flawless, young skin has driven many men and woman to the cosmetologist and quacks. They are willing to shell out unheard of amount to get a younger looking skin but here is a man, a physicist Anatoli Petrovich Bugorski who managed to get a younger looking face or half a face without shelling out a quid due to an accidental exposure to proton beam produced by a particle accelerator.

Bugorski is the only scientist known to have struck his head inside a running particle accelerator and lived to tell the tale. On July 13, 1978, the researcher was inspecting a malfunctioning piece of equipment.

Bugorski was a researcher at the Institute for High Energy Physics in Protvino, working with the Soviet particle accelerator: The Synchrotron U-70. He bent over the faulty equipment and put his head into that part of the accelerator that the proton beam was running through. Speaking about the experience, Bugorski stated that he saw a flash that was blinding and brighter than a thousand suns, surprisingly he did not feel any pain when the proton beam passed through his head.

The proton beam measuring about 2000 gray entered Bugorski’s skull and it was at 3000 gray when it exited from the other side of his skull.

The ‘gray’ or the symbol ‘Gy’ is the SI unit of energy absorbed from ionizing radiation (One gray is equal to the absorption of one joule of radiation energy by one kilogram of matter). For the scale of reference, absorbing more than 5 grays at any time will lead to the death of the victim within 14 days, especially in the case of X-rays where electromagnetic radiation passes through your body, however, no one had experienced radiation in the form of a proton beam moving at the speed of light.

The entry and exit of the proton beam through the physicist’s head caused the swelling of left half of his face. The supervising officials expected him to die within a few days.

The beam entered the back of Bugorski’s head and came out through his nose. Shortly after, the researcher’s face swelled alarmingly. He was rushed to the hospital and was closely monitored by the officials. Since they had never seen a person surviving such high dose of radiation, they expected him to die within few days.

Though the skin on the left side of the face and the back of his head peeled off over the next few days, Bugorski made it through the ordeal surprising everyone concerned.

Despite incurring few setbacks, Bugorski’s mental capabilities remained unimpaired.

The harrowing ordeal did throw up few setback but they were not life-threatening. But he did experience a couple of setbacks on his health front. He lost the hearing in his left year. There was a constant unpleasant noise in that ear. The left half of his face slowly started to paralyze over a period of two years. Mental work exhausted him faster. He was prone to absence seizures and later tonic-clonic seizures.

Inspite of all these impediments, Bugorski managed to get his PhD.

The most bizarre effect was on the left side of his face which stayed younger.

When you see the right side of Bugorski’s face now, you will see a man who has aged gracefully with time but the left side of his face remains frozen in time. The left side of his face remains wrinkle free and youthful, that part of his face hasn’t aged from 19 years! Apparently Botox cannot hold a candle to the a particle accelerator when it comes to halting times onward march.